Darcy and her Cat Memes
by fringeperson
Summary: Aka, the time she got tortured. Because so many of you who read Avengers on Sesame Street wanted to know what happened that time she got kidnapped. You horrible people. So, a bit more of my Avengers et al, Ldt. universe. Warnings for torture, but this is still the universe I made to satisfy my needs for fluffy, so I'm not going to be graphic about it. Don't own, oneshot, complete.


"Oh, I love electroshock therapy! It's like a shiatsu massage for your brain!" Darcy quoted in her best impression of Harley Quinn from the Suicide Squad movie cartoon. "And it's a good reason for me to treat myself to a full spa later. What it does to my hair, even Grumpy Cat would laugh."

"Will you _shut up_ about Grumpy Cat?!"

"But he's my favourite uncle!" Darcy objected.

"What."

Darcy grinned.

She didn't know which terrorist cell had kidnapped her, and honestly she didn't care. She'd managed to get one of them in the balls before they tied up her feet while she was in the back of their van, and had smashed her skull into the nose of another as they carried her off and into their secret base. One man immobilised, one in tears through purely physical means – breaking the nose does make the eyes water, after all.

Darcy had been untied only just long enough to be strapped to the electric chair, and each limb had someone holding it trapped while someone else untied and then secured her. She had managed to elbow one guy in the gut though, despite the awkward angles and being held like that.

Even better, between being shocked and having buckets of salt-water thrown in her face, Darcy had managed to find the buttons for emotional upheaval with one of the goons by questioning all of his life choices, and what his parents would say if they could see him now. It wasn't just 'your momma' jokes. It was full on _what happened to being someone your dad could be proud of and show off to his pals_? That guy was curled up in a corner of darkness and despair, growing metaphorical mushrooms of regret on the concrete floor, rocking back and forth on his feet and mumbling to himself as tears ran down his face.

The current score stood at Darcy four, goons... well, they did have her captive, and had been holding her for the past what? Hour and a half? Two hours? So... they got one point for that, maybe.

But Darcy was ginning, and aiming to get her fifth point, with a possible bonus as she eyed the other goons who were also in the room.

"Grumpy Cat is my favourite uncle," Darcy reiterated slowly, so that they definitely heard every word loud and clear, with no room for any mistakes. "Only relative I have on my dad's side, actually. Don't get me wrong, growing up Greek with my mother meant I always had lots of family and the best food as a kid, but my dad? My uncle? Whole different brand of awesome-sauce."

"And yet you call this supposedly favourite uncle 'Grumpy Cat'?" asked one of the lower goons, slightly incredulous.

"Well I'm not gonna call him 'Sabertooth' like everybody else does," Darcy pointed out reasonably, though rolling her eyes spoiled it a little bit. "He and Dad may be old as the hills, but he's not quite Pleistocene-ic."

"What." The word was a question. The inflection was so very, very not. The guy's face had gone slightly slack and his eyes were bugging a bit.

Darcy grinned. She knew that sound and that look. It was the human equivalent of the infamous Blue Screen of Death. She'd broken his brain. Score! Five points for Darcy.

There was a whimper behind her, and she craned her head around, grin still in place because there was no way it was getting wiped off any time soon. It could apparently still grow, though, as red-painted lips stretched even further across her face as she saw that one guy had pissed himself and another had collapsed to the ground, scuttled backwards into a different corner to the guy growing mushrooms of despair, and was crying as he stared at her in abject horror.

One more in tears and she'd have a hat-trick.

"Ceiling Cat is watching you," Darcy sing-songed, "and he is very disappointed with your life choices. Basement Cat is watching too, licking his paws as he waits to claim your soul."

With a broken wail, the guy who had pissed himself finally went down. He curled up in the foetal position right there in his own puddle of piss, and began to suck his thumb as he screwed up his eyes like that would stop the world from seeing him.

Huh, no tears from that one. Damn.

Darcy looked back at the man in charge of this truly pathetic operation. Just in time to cop another bucket of salt-water to the face, before the electric chair she was strapped to was fired up again.

"Just mentioning that I have a couple of highly dangerous male relatives does this to them?" she scoffed once the shock was past and she could work her jaw again. "They're not like Rumplestiltskin in Once Upon A Time, you know. They don't show up just because you say their names. Dude, you have pathetic people," Darcy added, looking Head Goon dead in the eye.

"I know!" he wailed unhappily, and burst into tears himself. Through all that, it was possible to hear complaints, ranted babbling-ly through the guy's loud sobs.

Darcy counted that as her win, even if she was still tied to the chair. It wasn't like it was doing any permanent harm, even it if did hurt like hell. She might not have gotten claws of any kind, and had fortunately missed out on the inclination to berserker-when-riled, but she _did_ inherit the super-awesome healing. Not that she ever bragged about it. She had heard all of her uncle's stories about what had happened to her dad – the man himself not remembering most of them – and Darcy had no desire to find herself strapped to a slab in a science lab.

Electric chairs as people tried to torture information out of her about her superheroes was a whole other ball of wax. Speaking of, was that violence she could hear happening beyond her pathetic little cell?

"Darcy!?" The worried yell echoed through the door.

"In here!" she yelled back.

The door was flung open by a metal arm, but a gorgeous Russian slipped in faster than the owner of said arm.

"Are you alright?" Natasha asked as she unstrapped Darcy with unshaking hands, all the rattled nerves were on display in her face though. "What am I talking about, of course you're not alright -"

"I'm fine," Darcy assured her. "A little wet, a little cold, a little bit fried and very uncomfortable, but they had the electric chair set to 'uncomfortable', not 'deadly'. I'm fine, truly."

"These guys aren't," Bucky observed as he finally stepped into the room.

"That one -" Darcy pointed with her newly-freed arm to the guy who was (still!) growing metaphorical mushrooms "- fell to shaming of the flavour 'what would your father say if he could see you now?', and those two couldn't hack my love of cat memes, and this guy crumbled in the face of his peons' incompetence. I got a guy in the balls earlier too, before they tied me up."

"Cat memes," Natasha repeated, an amused smile tugging against the worry that had drawn her mouth into a frown.

"No one appreciates my love for Grumpy Cat," Darcy informed the red-head plainly.

Bucky snorted, and Natasha ducked her head as the almost-smile became an actual one.

"Alright, when we go, I'll be in front, Barnes will be behind, you are between us at all times," Natasha instructed as she helped Darcy stand. "Okay?"

"Rodger dodger," Darcy agreed, and gave a very sloppy salute, which got another amused snort from Bucky.

Once Darcy was back at their base and everybody had been cleared by medical, she organised a Muppet Show Marathon – during which everybody sat as close to her as they could, and throughout which Bucky didn't once let go of her hand. She didn't mind. She knew he had his own issues with chairs and the application of electricity.

~The End~


End file.
